Journal of Studies in Language, Culture and Society (JSLCS)

Citizens Of The World: A Discourse-historical Analysis Of Mia Mottley's Cop Speeches

Auteurs : Ajmi Hela .

Résumé

This study explores the politics of global citizenship in the discourse of Mia Amor Mottley at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), specifically COP26 (2021), COP27 (2022), and COP28 (2023). It highlights the discursive construction of global citizenship as a socio-political construct that is both legitimised and contested in contemporary climate politics. Against the accelerating climate crisis, there is an increasing demand for climate justice, particularly from Global South actors, emphasising responsibility and moral agency. The research examines how Mottley deploys discursive, linguistic, and argumentative strategies to articulate global citizenship as an ethical, political, and structural imperative within complex multilateral negotiating arenas. The study employs Ruth Wodak's Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), enabling a systematic analysis of Mottley's strategies in her climate discourse against the backdrop of postcolonial perspectives, structural inequalities, and global financial asymmetries. A detailed discourse analysis of her three COP speeches traces shifts in tone, argumentative strategy, modality, metaphorical framing, and rhetorical positioning across COP26–28. The findings identify key discursive, interdiscursive, and intertextual strategies alongside linguistic realisations such as modal constructions, intensification, and metaphorical patterns to foreground postcolonial memory as a basis for ethical responsibility, reframe vulnerability as a locus of moral authority, and present global citizenship as a praxis requiring systemic transformation. The analysis further demonstrates a discursive shift from moral urgency toward increasingly technocratic and governance-oriented climate rhetoric. This study addresses critical gaps in global citizenship scholarship, including the marginalisation of Global South political discourse and the limited application of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to climate leadership. By showing how Mottley reconceptualises global citizenship as a politically potent and justice-oriented framework, it contributes to broader debates on planetary governance, postcolonial equity, and ethical climate action.

Mots clés

Climate justice; COP26–28 speeches; Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA); global citizenship; Mia Amor Mottley